The art of simplicity

Although Oracle support for Entity Framework was available through some 3th party components , Oracle has finally released it’s (free!) version of ODP.NET that supports Entity Framework for use in production environments. This is great news for many developers! Unfortunately features like Code First and DbContext can not be used with this release. ODAC 11.2 Release 4 Production Released with Entity Framework and LINQ Support ODAC 11.2 Release 4 (11.2.0.3) has arrived for Entity Framework and LINQ developers! It includes 32-bit and x64 versions with the option of using an automated installer or xcopy deployment. The release incorporates Oracle Database client 11.2.0.3, which can access Oracle Database 9.2 and higher. Oracle supports Entity Framework and LINQ with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4, including Entity Framework 4.1 and 4.2. Code First is not supported in this release. Download ODAC 11.2 Release 4 32-bit ODAC with Oracle Develope...

A lot of developers among us have to work with Oracle databases. Unfortunately the Visual Studio 2008 Database Edition only supported SQL Server databases. With the release of Visual Studio 2010, Quest, the organization behind well-known database tools like TOAD, have released a database edition plugin that supports Oracle. This Toad Extension for Visual Studio 2010 even supports more features than the SQL Server version! To make it even better, Quest has just released their FREE version of the Toad Extension for Visual Studio 2010 . Developers with a Visual Studio 2010 Professional License can now manage database change under source control as they can for SQL Server. Important remark: Developers that use Visual Studio Premium and Ultimate, still need the Commercial version of Toad Extension for Visual Studio.

A new version of NDbUnit was released and Oracle support has finally been integrated. This now brings the complete list of supported DB targets under NDbUnit to six: Microsoft SQL Server (including Express Editions and on up to Enterprise) Microsoft OleDb -supported databases* Microsoft SqlServerCe /Mobile Edition/whatever its called this month MySql Oracle (including XE and on up to Enterprise) SqlLite (including both on-disk and in-memory variants)

One of the Visual Studio Team System version is the Visual Studio Database Edition for Database Professionals. This offered great functionality to manage your database scripts and version, generate testdata, run database unit tests but…only on SQL Server. With TeamFuze support will also be available for Oracle databases starting from the Visual Studio 2010 edition. So if you are using Oracle and interested in al the Visual Studio Database features, download the beta here .